Whiplash and Other News

So, I wrenched my neck on Tuesday and I’ve exacerbated the old whiplash injury. I’d like to claim I was doing something heroic but it was humiliatingly domestic and not worthy of being part of a story. Between this and the right ankle which still occasionally twinges (or the hip if I’m balancing my weight badly because of the ankle), clearly my body isn’t in optimum working condition. However, the fatigue is much, much better than it was which is great because pain I can manage; the fatigue I still have difficulty managing.

Unfortunately today I’m very stiff and pained because yesterday I cleaned the house. I’m beginning to think I should ask my Dad to pay for a cleaner for a year as my Christmas present but I know it’s a waste of money when my pain is under control. Possibly I just need to pace myself better (before Mauritius I had got into the habit of splitting the house up – top, middle and bottom on different days).

In other news, I haven’t done very much over the past couple of weeks (unsurprisingly) between the revision for the exam and the health issues but I did manage to find time to do the necessary things which included putting together the training material for a course I’m running pro-bono for a charity organisation in Novemeber. I’m looking forward to it. Next week, I’ll be focused primarily on the business as the psychology is now on hiatus until January – I do have a couple of projects in mind around articles but they’re not top priority.

Writing wise National Novel Writing Month starts on 1st November and I will be taking part again in the hopes of getting the draft of the novel finished. It’s been going reasonably well anyway but I like taking part in NaNoWriMo.

The cat is doing well. She’s completely settled in and spending time in the garden on her own and happily coming back in when she’s called. She’s still a riot. I’m looking forward to Dad meeting her since he’ll be home soon (and thank God because he can take over doing the vacuum cleaning).

Finally, let’s talk about the X Factor because clearly Simon’s advice to the judges this week was “be controversial and make it about you rather than the contestants.” Gary clearly tried by calling Sami’s performance boring and cruise ship (which was true even if she has a great voice – Louis did the same thing last time with Mary), and blaming Louis for making bad acts worse. I think the problem is that actually Louis does have great acts this season but he’s just using the same formula with them as he always does – hence Sami=Mary and the cruise ship comparison. With the other two he’s gone for the ‘put on a flamboyant show to hide the flaws’ strategy which is off target for a number of reasons. Kitty does suit a flamboyant styling and staging, but she’s actually is a better singer than she’s been given credit for, and with Johnny who can sing, has the most incredibly unique voice and seems to be a really likeable funny guy, it’s coming across as Louis making a joke out of him rather than celebrating Johnny’s very real talent. Maybe the strategy will keep them in the competition but especially with Johnny I feel its undermining his credibility as an artist: he’s not Lady Gaga.

Of course, Gary’s attempt at controversy was almost blown out of the water by Tulisa and then Louis calling out Misha (who had the stand out performance of the night) on her behaviour backstage. Personally, I agree with Gary and Kelly: if there is a problem it should have been handled backstage and not used in judging commentary.

And that’s it for this week. I’m off to do some writing and figure out a menu for next week so I can do my Tesco’s shopping…